BOE Approves Adoption of Amplify ELA for Grades 6 - 8

In a meeting dominated largely by procedure, like formally approving the 0% budget increase and replacing school policies with little discussion, the Stafford Board of Education also heard about the Amplify ELA program. It ultimately approved its implementation in grades 6-8. The Amplify CKLA program has already been underway in the lower grades, and on Monday, May 19, 2025, Dr. Heather Jacobi, Interim Chief Academic Officer, told the BOE about the pilot of the Amplify ELA in middle school and beyond.

Dr. Jacobi said she worked with teachers to adapt the off-the-shelf program to the needs of Stafford's students, and read examples of writing from a 6th grader about the Titanic. Students researched people from the ship and wrote from their point of view. Seventh graders worked on a non-fiction brain science unit.

The company's website describes Amplify ELA this way: "With Amplify ELA, students learn to tackle any complex text and make observations, grapple with interesting ideas, and find relevance for themselves."It's also worth noting that the changing curriculum and integrating ELA into one class (rather than separate classes for reading and writing) were part of eliminating two teachers from Stafford Middle School when cuts were necessary due to budget constraints.

According to Jacobi, Amplify ELA reviews from teachers are glowing. Not only does it help students acquire new lexile skills, but exposes them to topics they had not previously been exposed to, according to teachers. They also find this new model more rigorous.

Source: May 19, 2025 Stafford BOE meeting

Jacobi also pointed to increases in the STAR Reading Assessment scores, which measure students' vocabulary, comprehension, ability to analyze texts, understand the author's craft, analyze arguments, and evaluate texts. In the fall 2023 assessment, students scored an average of 55.3%, which fell into the 40s in the spring of 2024, but in winter 2025, students scored an average of 70%. That's a huge jump, but it's worth noting that, in 2024, Renaissance Learning changed its norms and benchmarks and could have impacted scoring. Additionally, those scores compare different groups of students. However, Dr. Jacobi also provided data following the same cohort of students through three school years. As she said, the goal is to see the green part of the chart get bigger while the red gets smaller. Dr. Jacobi provided data for sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders. Eighth graders saw particularly big leaps in their scores.

BOE member Erica Bushior said her child has been part of the Titanic unit and was very enthusiastic about it. Chair Sara Kelley said, "It's nice to see in general that we're giving our students the materials they need to be successful and bringing things up to date; it's very much long overdue." Interim Superintendent Dr. Laura Norbut thanked the board for financially supporting the transition, as it came at a cost, but "we're getting a tremendous benefit for the students."